Elandon Roberts plans to retire with the Pittsburgh Steelers—though perhaps not right away. While he is going into his ninth season, he still has ball left in him, which includes starting in 2024. What happens after that? We’ll have to see, but he didn’t sign with the Steelers in free agency by happenstance.
A 2016 sixth-round pick by the New England Patriots, Elandon Roberts told Cameron Heyward that his first free agency period was easy. He already knew where he wanted to go, so he just had to wait for the call. He followed Brian Flores to the Miami Dolphins, where he spent three seasons. Hitting free agency again in 2023, however, proved to be different for him. There was more at stake in that phase of his NFL life.
“This was the most stressful one because now it was time to pick a fit”, Roberts said on the Not Just Football podcast. “I was to that point, I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m going into my eighth year, do I just take the most money or do I go to the perfect fit?’. Because you know when you start to get into them years, you pick the wrong team just because of money, you’ll be gone out the league the next year just because you didn’t pick the right fit. So it was all about fit”.
Many players don’t even see a third contract, including ones with clear NFL talent. A lot of times that can be about choosing the wrong fit by opting for the larger contract. I could rattle off a list of names of players whose careers tanked after signing big-money deals because of schemes. We don’t really need to do that, though, or even go far—just look at how Cameron Sutton struggled with how the Detroit Lions used him last year. Elandon Roberts knew that the Steelers would fit him like a glove, though.
“With the teams I had in my mind, like, ‘These would be a perfect fit’, Mike [Tomlin] and Omar [Khan] came in”, Roberts recalled. “It had to be Thursday morning because I was like, ‘Man, let’s get it done’. Because I already knew it made a perfect fit. I had other teams, but it just didn’t fit. It didn’t make sense. Especially my style of linebacker, it didn’t make sense to them teams. Once they called, it was a no-brainer”.
Roberts is right about it being a Thursday, or in other words, the third official day of free agency. He didn’t sign any kind of massive contract, but he is in an organization and a team that suits him. I don’t think there is any question that he belongs here and is already an undisputed leader.
As you would imagine, Elandon Roberts didn’t go into detail about what other offers he might have had from other teams. I’m willing to take him at his implied word that he could have earned more elsewhere. But he knew then, and he knows now where he belongs. The only thing he is missing is Vince William’s Stone Cold vest.
